


The Fall of the Irish

by asexualshepard



Series: Broken Scopes [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: ??? i guess it's a retelling, Backstory, Character Development, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Military Backstory, Nightmares, Retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5759239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asexualshepard/pseuds/asexualshepard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A novelization/rewrite of the first twenty-or-so odd minutes of Fallout 4, as told by my Sole Survivor, Ethan O'Connell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fall of the Irish

**Author's Note:**

> This was a piece I wrote for my creative writing class, because I'm the worst and I write fanfiction for a grade. That said, I cut it a little shorter than I would have liked because I reached the page limit. Whoops. So, I may return at a later date and continue it, but, for now, I'm just going to leave it as is. 
> 
> <3

“Irish, you good?”

Delta’s voice echoes in Ethan’s ear, the familiar nickname his squadmates had given him seeming to ring like a bell as his nose twitches against the onslaught of cold. It feels like there’s ice in his blood, scratching at the insides of his veins. Before being deployed to Anchorage, Ethan had thought he’d understood cold, had figured Massachusetts was chilly enough. Now, he knows that he couldn’t have been more wrong. Anchorage is a wasteland--frozen and shattered--and he can’t wait to leave. 

Ethan adjusts his rifle on the windowsill in front of him and brings his cheekbone to the scope, the frozen metal digging into his skin. “I’m good,” he mutters into his earpiece. “Go ahead and advance.”

He closes one eye to allow himself better focus, and, a moment later, he catches sight of the barest of movements. Nine figures creep from one shadow to the next. He can make out the logos on their shoulders, embroidered into the dark fabric, and he sighs. 

“You gotta move faster, I’m catching your tails.”

“Nine guys can only move so fast, Irish.”

“Yeah, well, if nine guys don’t move faster they’re gonna be spotted,” he says. “Don’t make me actually work, okay?”

Delta snorts--a poor idea for a stealth mission. “Aye aye, Captain.” 

Ethan’s scope follows them as they move, jumping from shadow to shadow with little to no issue, pace increasing as they go. Soon, Ethan can make out simple shapes and nothing else. Every once in awhile, Delta’s voice will come in his ear, orders for the men following him, but no more instruction for their sniper. So he waits patiently, thighs cramping the longer he crouches, skin indenting where his scope digs in, observant. If any Reds manage to sneak up on his team, his trigger finger will be ready. 

But then it’s like everything is moving through mud--slow and heavy. Everything save for Ethan. Somehow, he feels it in his chest before he sees it, before he hears it--his ribs tightening around his lungs, his heart stopping, and he can’t breathe. Then the beep. Soft, quiet, but still bouncing back and forth between his ears like a sickly song. It only stops when everything else does. 

And then nine pairs of eyes find him, heads turning slowly, mouths opening in silent screams. He shouldn’t be able to see every detail of their faces--they’re a hundred meters away--but he can, and he watches as their skin begins to bubble, as pieces of it fall away and leave behind black and red gaps in their features. Teeth fall from their mouths,  eyes bulge.  He can feel the flames clawing up their arms in his own, and he yells, but he can’t hear himself. He can’t hear anything.

Boom.

“Ethan!”

His eyes fly open, hands reaching out to grab and push, to ensure that he’s safe, that no one can get to him. His fingers shake as he shoves at the form over him, as panic rises in his throat. They can’t find him. The Reds can’t find him. They can’t. They can’t. They--

“Hey, hey, look at me!”

Reality slams into him like a sledgehammer. His shoulders shudder as his grey eyes find a face--a familiar, delicate face. Small nose, big eyes, brown hair that falls in those waves he loves. Nora. Soft and small and real. 

“I--God, Nora, I’m so sorry.”

She reaches out to smooth her fingers through his hair, wet with his own sweat. “Shh, you’re alright, big guy.” 

Though they still crawl over his palm, burrow in his forearms, the tremors in his fingers calm somewhat. However, while he’s shaking, Nora is sure and still, her fingertips brushing his hair out of his eyes and rubbing against his temples, drawing him out of his nightmare and into their bedroom, the home they’d built together.

“Was it the land mine again?” Her voice is quiet, as if she’s afraid to ask. 

Ethan forces his tense muscles to relax. “It’s always the landmine.”

She nods and smooths the pads of her fingers over his cheekbones, down the corner of his jaw. The touch grounds him, and he allows his mind to go blank. He pushes away all of the memories, the visions of his friends, and slowly returns to his own body. The tremors, though, continue just as always. 

However, with the horrifying images absent, guilt fills the empty space. It’s a cycle he’s familiar with. First come the crippling nightmares, the screams of men he’d once called his brothers, and then the whispers of  _ you’re a burden  _ and  _ no one wants a broken man _ . And then, just as every other night, he gets out of bed. 

“Babe, don’t--”

“I’m just gonna go check on Shaun.” 

But they both know that Ethan is lying, that he doesn’t intend on returning to their bed at any time this night. Still, Nora lets him go.

The hallway is dark, the shadows deceiving his eyes into believing that the corridor is far longer than he knows it actually is. With his tremoring fingertips against the wall, he heads into the inky blackness and paces the familiar amount of steps to find himself at the doorway to Shaun’s nursery, where the door is ajar, light so soft it nearly goes unnoticed as it filters through the cracks. Ethan reaches out to push it open, and the hinges creak as it swings, pulling a flinch from his shoulders. He waits for cries to come from the crib at the far side of the room, but the silence continues, and he breathes a harsh sigh of relief before stepping inside. 

“Hey, buddy,” he whispers as he crosses the blue carpet, approaches the side of Shaun’s crib and leans against it, folding his arms over the side. He looks down at his son, not even a year old and bundled in countless blankets, and the guilt pooling in his gut sinks slightly. A breath shudders between his lips. “Thanks for being a champ,” he says as he allows one of his arms to drop, his fingers brushing against the soft blankets within the crib-- the ones Nora’s mother had made. “Your mom deserves a bit of rest for everything she does.” 

For a quiet moment, Ethan considers taking Shaun’s small, soft hand in his fingers. He even reaches for it. But then he sees the trembles, the way his muscles twitch against his bones, and he stops, instead bringing his arm back to fold against his other one. He sets his chin against his forearms and watches his son sleep. Peace settles in the dimly lit room--the nightlight doesn’t really do anything other than give the space a slight golden hue--and Ethan allows himself to feel it, to breathe easier, to calm. 

The last thing he expects to hear is the sirens--loud and wailing and far, far more familiar than they should be. His trembling fingers are forgotten immediately, whatever exhaustion in his system flushed by the annoying tone. Ethan’s mind is foggy and he can’t quite remember when the system was last tested, but, no matter when the last test was, they don’t happen in the middle of the night, when the rest of the world is asleep and unassuming. If the sirens are sounding, that means--

“Ethan!” Nora’s voice is shrill, cracking along his name, and panic begins to rise in his throat. Swallowing the swelling feeling at the back of his throat, his fingers stumble over the latch on the side of the crib, the shaking returning to its initial intensity and making it impossible for him to get a solid grip. Sharp, earsplitting wails erupt from Shaun’s small mouth and rise and fall with the sirens. Ethan’s throat is closing up, his breaths quick and fast, and his head is swimming in nothing but noise and hysteria. 

“Nora!” he calls, wheezing around the two syllables of her name, but she’s already at his side, gently shoving him and making quick work of the latch his tumultuous hands hadn’t been able to handle. The whispers of guilt swim back into Ethan’s ears as she scoops Shaun up in her arms. She cradles him against her chest, whispering against his ear, bouncing him lightly in a calming motion. After a moment, she turns to Ethan, brown eyes wide and face holding an unusual pallor, but his gaze is bouncing around the room, over his shoulder as if someone is going to slink up behind him. 

“Ethan,” Nora cajoles, shifting to put herself in his line of vision. “Sweetheart, look at me.” He doesn’t, and she shifts Shuan to one arm before reaching out to grab Ethan’s chin and bring his eyes to her’s. “Hey, hey. Keep your eyes on me, okay?”

Her fingers are soft against his jaw but her grip is firm, and all of his focus is drawn to that one point of contact, allowing his breathing to even out and the panic flaring in his mind to shift and hide at the back of his skull. He exhales through his nose, nostrils flaring, and nods. 

“We need to get to the bunker,” Nora says slowly, enunciating every syllable in an attempt to get her words to reach him. “Everything’s going to be fine, Ethan.”

He swallows against the disbelief clawing at the back of his throat, and nods again, one of his shaking hands rising to remove her’s from his chin, winding their fingers together. He presses his lips briefly to the back of her wrist, and then releases her to instead usher her out of Shaun’s nursery, back into the hallway that’s too dark, into their living room and out the front door.

Outside is nothing but chaos. People--neighbors and friends--run past, screaming and shouting and crying, all headed in the same direction. Past these noises, the humming of helicopter blades fills the air, bright, white lights flood across the pavement of the road, bounce along the siding and roofs of homes. It’s all too similar--too much like a warzone, and Ethan struggles to keep bile from rising in his throat, to block the screams from his ears. The only thing keeping him on his feet is Nora’s fingers at his elbow, her insistent tugging at his shirt. 

“Sweetheart, please, we have to go!”

Ethan shudders a breath, and the muscles in his legs tense as he puts his hand to her back and gives her as gentle a push as he can manage. He tries to keep his fingers at her arm as they run, to maintain some form of contact to keep him from falling into his thoughts again, but his grasp slips, and he has to stumble to reach her again. Shoulders slam into his own and nearly pull the ground out from beneath his feet, shouts in his ears make him flinch, but he still manages to stay at Nora’s back, to reach the fence  that’s being monitored by men in helmets and fatigues at the same time as her. A swarm of people have gathered at the gate, all of them barking complaints, and Ethan grabs Nora’s elbow tightly before pulling her through the crowd. 

“Please, folks, if you’re not on the list clear a path for those who are!” a man with a clipboard grasped tightly in his gloved hands shouts, his eyes wide and his face pale. 

Ethan pulls Nora close and glances to make sure Shaun is alright before he turns to the man. “O’Connell,” he says, gasping the words through constricting lungs. “Two adults and a newborn, please, we need to--”

“I see ya. Quick, head up to the top of the hill before they send the next group down.”

The man steps aside and Ethan ushers Nora past him, through the gate. Together, they stumble up the hill, breaths harsh as they meet the chilly night air, bare feet scrambling against the loose dirt of the makeshift path that had been worn into the ground. More soldiers wait at the top of the hill, along with more of the blinding lights, and there’s less noise here, less shouting, but that just makes what noise there is more distinguishable. Crying children tug at heartstrings with more ease, mutters of throaty, false assurances fill the gaps. 

“We’ve got two more!”

A soldier rushes up to them, waving them towards a large platform at the crest of the hill. “Sir, ma’am,” he greets quickly. “We need to send you down. Please, on the platform as quickly as you can.”

Ethan swallows and nods. “Thank you,” he breathes as his arm wraps around Nora, pulling her closer as they make their way toward the large crowd of people standing on a metal disk embedded in the hill, slipping into the group and huddling together as best as they can. 

“We made it,” Nora mutters, cradling Shaun to her chest. “Thank God, we made it.” 

However, Ethan’s eyes are fixed on the horizon, watching lights high in the sky move about and buzz--planes. But the sirens are still sounding, ringing in his ears, and that means they aren’t  _ just  _ planes. 

_ They’re bombers.  _

The platform begins to lower too late. At the furthest reaches of his view, fire reaches into the black sky, and earth-shattering boom following and sending several people to their knees while others stumble into their neighbors. The cloud of flames reaches higher and higher, the tightness in Ethan’s throat grows. He can see the shockwave running along the earth as the platform sinks into the ground, the lip at his knees, and then his waist. Before the wave is out of his view, hidden by the wall of the strange elevator-like contraption taking them down into the terrain, Ethan turns to Nora, presses a kiss to her forehead. 

“I love you.”

_ Boom.  _


End file.
